Weekly Rochester Events #357: Where the Hicks Are

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Whew ... a rather busy week and another one ahead, what with
The High Falls Film Festival
upon us. Friday night I stopped by
Monty's Krown
(875 Monroe Ave.)
to see
Autumn In Halifax
play with a big group of people:
Andy Gilmore,
Will Veeder,
Kelli Shay Hicks,
Chad Oliveiri,
Joe Tunis, and
Chris Reeg.
It was fantastic. Everyone brought their own flavor to the performance of Dave's songs. It was often so complex to listen to that I had to close my eyes to keep from being distracted by the stimulus of my sight. I'm just sad that I was in such a lousy mood that night and had to get home afterward.

Saturday I was in much better spirits and when I went to the potluck dinner at
The Ant Hill Cooperative
(960 South Plymouth Ave.)
There was plenty of food and I was glad to see people developing communities — many of the people from the neighborhood stopped by as well as the members of the cooperative and several more people from the city-at-large (such as myself.)

However, I got a sense some of the difficulties of maintaining the cooperative system. In general, it's keeping people contributing to the common good when it is to their advantage — their individual advantage — to do as little work as possible. Ant Hill's solution seems to be to use bureaucracy (that is, "rule by drawers") to artificially create incentive. In digging around their website and meeting notes, I find
they've devised a system of assigning credits to particular chores — everyone is debited the same amount each week and tries to stay as close to zero as possible by completing enough work.

Since it's a system, though, it's prone to failure cases: for instance, if one person did lots of work in one week then did nothing for a month. They would stay within the functional parameters of the system, but their lazy periods would likely annoy the other working members of the cooperative.

Therein lies the crux of the problem: the bureaucracy is designed to formalize the process of making a community, but in creating formality, there are always loopholes. Instead, I think the sense of community needs to be continunally refreshed — maintaining a sense of pride in being part of a whole in addition to pride as an individual. I don't have some easy answer, but so far people haven't made self-sustaining
bureaucracies of this type (see also, The Soviet Union). I'm curious if the initial excitement of setting up a system that keep people going for a while can be maintained ... the pitfall being that human beings are prone to becoming accustomed to whatever level of excitement they are presented.

Anyway, later that night I went to the
Dryden Theatre
at
George Eastman House
(900 East Ave.)
to see
Reel Paradise.
It's a pretty interesting film about a guy who opens a movie theater on Fiji and shows commercial American films for free. The native Fijians were shown to be a lot like society anywhere: some good, some bad, some honest, and some deceptive. The American outsiders also reflected facets of stereotypical Americans: brash, kind, clueless, trusting, and naive. One of the things that
John Pierson
said of the church is that he's concerned that it is taking this indigenous culture based on community and teaching individual greed. Ironically, one of the conflicts was that someone was stealing from the Pierson's — so is it the church that's teaching this individual greed or the Piersons demonstrating it?

Anyway, on Tuesday I went out to vote. In the end, it was
Robert Duffy
who won (not surprisingly) with over 72% of the vote (Parinello got 16%, Mains got 10%, and Maj got a little over 1%.) All the candidates (except
Chris Maj)
echoed the same lines: jobs and crime are related to money. I claim, though, that both problems stem from a deeper cause: the lack of community.

It is popular in our present American culture to prioritize our lives on independence, income, and individuality (ha ... "the three I's"). With that as our primary focus, we miss out on the important value of community and society. It all comes down to money for most people — that money is the measure of the man. However, I feel we should be thinking in terms of "overall benefit."

There was an article in
Salon.com
titled
Throwing Google at the book
concerning Google scanning paper books to make them electronically searchable. In concept this is beneficial — higher accessibility, a more efficient system of finding pertinent data, and, overall, a means to really help humanity learn faster. There is the chance, though, that the now easily-copyable versions of books can be illegally sold and distributed.

Opponents often cite that Google is a for-profit company and therefore cannot be entrusted with this information. However, it's not money or profit that is the cause of unscrupulous behavior: it's the retribution-free nature of corporations. Nobody is responsible for the damage caused by a corporation — the problem isn't that a corporation is interested in profits, it is that by design it has no conscience.

In general, though, our real challenge is to work on building community. Bolster the human spirit. Hold everyone's desire to benefit themselves and everyone else as a goal worth striving for. Encourage people to create. Let them present. Teach debate and critique. Foster creativity in our schools; our homes; our city.

Back to activities for a moment: on Tuesday I made it to another
Artists Breakfast Group
meetings at
Bausch and Lomb
(140 Stone St.)
It was great to once again hear people talking about community building. Well, I'm talking about community building while there, we are building community. It's nice to know about people doing art — doing art because they have to; what their heart demands.

So go out there this week and see some movies that people made because they had to — not because the gross sales will be more than the cost of production. Go see bands play because they have to — not because they were selected by a record label to be logically the next popular thing and are now playing their original album again and again to make a living. Go make something.

This morning at 9:30 a.m. is the presentation of the results from
Steppin' Up To Solutions Lock-in & Rally on Anti-Violence,
an all-night lock-in caucus with 13-year-old to 18-year-old youths held the night prior at
The Edgerton Community Center
(41 Backus St.)
The presentation will be given at
The Liberty Pole
(1 Liberty Pole Way.)
[source:
City Hall press release]

One of the really cool things they do at
The High Falls Film Festival
is
Screenplay Live!
where they get actors to read a new script and invite audience comment. This time it's at 10:30 a.m. at
Geva
(75 Woodbury Blvd.)
and they'll be reading
The Break-In
by
Ryan David Jahn
as directed by
Anastasia Cerankosky.
The story is about a man who kills a burglar in self-defense and leaves the dead man's body in his house until he finds the identity of the victim.
[source:
High Falls Film Festival website]

There's two films in
The High Falls Film Festival
I want to see early this evening.
Caché(Hidden)
will be shown at 7:15 p.m. in the
Dryden Theatre
at
George Eastman House
(900 East Ave.)
It's about a French man who ruins the life of an Algerian man while they were children and the Algerian returns in vengeance many years later — a view of relations between races largely foreign to Americans. After the film,
Angela Bassett
will be presented with the festival's
"Failure is Impossible" Award.
The other film is
Somersault
playing in the front #1 theater of
The Little
(240 East Ave.)
at 7:30 p.m. It's about a young woman who fools around with her mother's boyfriend and then runs away from home. She's left with her attractiveness and her wits to kick-start life on her own, and in the process, faces the spectrum of behavior from men from kindness to misogyny.
[source:
High Falls Film Festival website]

Today's midday selections from
The High Falls Film Festival
are your choice of one or two discussions. At 11:00 a.m. you can go to the
Curtis Theatre
at
George Eastman House
(900 East Ave.)
to see a panel discussion of
Documentary Filmmaking
and then come back to the same location for the
Gallery Talk
at 1 p.m. with
Amy Taubin
and
Mania Akbari
discussing Akbari's video works on display in the downstairs of Little Theatre #1. Overlapping both with a start time of 12:00 p.m. is
Wallace, Gromit, Chickens, Raisins and Me: Teresa Drilling, Stop-Motion Animator
in back at
The Little
(240 East Ave.)
for a bit of whimsy and a bit of interesting discussion about whimsy with animator
Teresa Drilling.
[source:
High Falls Film Festival website]

Today at 12 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. is the first
Geva 101
at
Geva
(75 Woodbury Blvd.):
An Approach to Acting
featuring Geva's Artist-in-Residence
Skip Greer
discussing his approach to preparing roles for the stage.
[source:
Geva Theatre website]

This morning at 7:30 a.m. in the cafeteria overlooking the arboretum in
Bausch and Lomb
(140 Stone St.)
is the
Artists Breakfast Group
meeting ... anyone interested in art or creativity is invited. This time it's
Show and Tell
where you can bring in a piece to show off or get a critique.

Tonight at
Geva
(75 Woodbury Blvd.)
at 8 p.m. is a preview of
Shear Madness
about a concert pianist with lots of enemies who's murdered on stage — and the audience decides who the killer is.
[source:
Geva Theatre website]

Why are you sitting there naked?
Godiva's
(653 South Ave.)
is having a big sale: 50% off vintage apparel and 20% off military apparel (except coats) today, Thursday, and Saturday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. and on Friday from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. (from November 9 to November 19.)